"I want to assure the community and the family that we have not given up on this, we are following leads and anything that comes up we will certainly run that out," Insp Peff said.

Missing Sunshine Coast man Aaron Flynn

Aaron was last seen walking with a jerry can along the road on Friday, November 11, but police were first advised he was missing on Wednesday, November 16.

That evening, QPS located Aaron's black Volvo station wagon abandoned and launched the full-scale land and helicopter search of about 50km sq of "difficult terrain" in hot conditions from Thursday, November 17.

Insp Peff said he absolutely understood the family's actions and explained police had conducted a systematic search "very much structured around survivability".

"And structured around the distance that person would reasonably expect to travel in a known time and then we obviously run in a bit of extra distance on top of that," Insp Peff said.

"That's been done, but I do absolutely understand the family's motivation to try and find him and I understand why they're doing what they are doing.

"The reason we have stopped the physical search was based on survivability; now I want to be clear that doesn't mean we say that he hasn't survived, but under the circumstances and the area we were searching, survivability was determined to be zero.

"So that doesn't mean that he hasn't been picked up by someone or hasn't managed to get a lift, what it means is a person leaving that position on foot over that period of time given the heat and the conditions that existed at the time and the amount of water it's believed from expert advice that it wasn't survivable."